Simon Pagenaud topped the times in the second of Friday’s practice sessions for this weekend’s IndyCar races on Belle Isle in Detroit.
Pagenaud, whose victory in Race 2 was his first in Indy car racing and the first for Schmidt Hamilton Motorsports, set the bar high in the afternoon practice with a lap of 1 minute, 17.6502 seconds on the 2.36-mile, 13-turn temporary street circuit. Conway was .0647 of a second back in the No. 20 Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka car for Ed Carpenter Racing, and both were within three-tenths of a second of Conway’s track record in its current configuration (1:17.4371) set in Race 2 last June.
Conway earned the Verizon P1 Award for Race 2 with a best lap of 1:18.0977, while Dario Franchitti was the pole winner for Race 1 with a lap of 1:19.3311.
Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves, runner-up in the Indianapolis 500 on May 25, and Will Power also recorded laps under 1:18 in the practice, while Ryan Hunter-Reay posted a best lap of 1:18.1674. The newly-crowned 500 Mile Race champion was quickest in the opening session.